By Aeneas Leviné
FRANCE – The Group of Seven, or G7, met in the resort town of Évian-les-Bains, France, from June 15 to 17, 2026, gathering together the most significant representatives and lackeys of the imperialist system operating within the International Monetary Fund. At the annual summit, these powers plot the repartition of the globe and the subjugation of the world’s peoples. The response of the masses has been fierce. On Sunday, June 14, over 20,000 demonstrators, including approximately 600 Black Bloc, gathered to protest near the U.N. headquarters and airport in Geneva, Switzerland, where many representatives were arriving. The intensification of the class struggle demonstrates the opposition of the broad masses to the barbarism of the imperialist system and the urgency of building an internationalist anti-imperialist movement.
The G7 is an annual summit of criminals and puppets. It is one of the central meetings of the leading imperialist states to coordinate their common strategy against the workers and oppressed peoples of the world, even as they sharpen their own contradictions against one another. The G7 includes Canada, France, Italy, Japan Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with the European Union as a permanent non-hosting member.
Alongside these leading powers, Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, Qatar, Ukraine, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates were summoned for a puppet show. The dependent countries are brought before the imperialist powers to bargain over debt, markets, military alignment, and access to resources, while the G7 States seek to deepen their lackey character and secure a larger piece of the world for themselves.
Because President Emmanuel Macron’s government banned protests near the summit site in France, demonstrators gathered across Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The Sunday march consisted of anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and feminist blocs, combining several struggles into one powerful mobilization against the summit. At the rear of the procession was a car carrying a giant effigy of Donald Trump, with red paint portraying blood oozing from his eyes and mouth, and a black cocktail glass in his hand marked “Cuba.”
Swiss and French authorities responded with militarization. More than 12,000 police and military personnel were deployed, with over 800 French border control officers active where only dozens are normally stationed. Roads were blocked, unauthorized gatherings were banned, banners and magazines were confiscated, financial support for businesses affected by unrest was pledged, and helicopters hovered above the city. The State transformed the region into an armed camp, proving once again that imperialist democracy ends where the masses begin to resist.
Confrontations broke out as demonstrators showed their contempt for the summit. Protesters threw bottles, stones, cement pieces, and firecrackers at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. A Tesla burned with the slogan “Eat the Rich” sprayed on its side. Protesters chanted in support of Palestine, climate action, and anti-Imperialism as they made their way through the barricaded city. Buildings near the European headquarters of the United Nations were damaged, including the International Telecommunication Union and the multinational firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This militant opposition stands in a long history of anti-G7 and anti-G8 struggle. Since the 1990s, these summits have been met by mass demonstrations in France, the United States, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. In Genoa in 2001, as many as 300,000 people filled the streets against the G8, and the Italian State answered with brutal repression, including the killing of Carlo Giuliani. In 2003, when the summit was last held near Évian, 120,000 demonstrators mobilized against the summit only months after the U.S. occupation of Baghdad.
The Évian summit this year concentrated the state of the world today: a ruling elite entrenched in a high security resort, plotting new wars and attacks on social programs, while growing resistance outside met the concentrated force of the State.
The initial item on the summit agenda was the war in Ukraine. The Euro-American imperialist powers continue to fuel the war with Russia, not for the liberation of the Ukrainian people, but to weaken Russian Imperialism, expand NATO influence, secure markets, and reshape the balance of power in Europe.
Germany has taken a leading role in supplying Ukraine with long range weapons and drone technology capable of striking deep inside Russia. Such acts are designed to escalate the war and provoke retaliation, which the Euro-American powers can then use to justify further militarization. The people of Ukraine and Russia pay in blood, while arms manufacturers, energy monopolies, and capitalists prepare their profits.
The next topic covered was the war on Iran. Under the guise of security and non-proliferation, U.S. Imperialism continues to threaten the Iranian people with annihilation. Trump’s threats against Iran exposed the real content of American diplomacy: sanctions, bombers, aircraft carriers, blackmail, and regime change. The Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear program, and the balance of forces in the Middle East are all treated by the G7 as calculus in the struggle for oil, trade routes, bases, and regional domination.
The summit also addressed economic questions, especially trade war, tariffs, artificial intelligence, and the sharpening struggle with China. Trump threatened France with 200 percent tariffs on wine unless it withdrew taxes on major U.S. digital corporations. Macron invited the heads of leading digital and artificial intelligence firms, including monopoly figures tied to OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic. These capitalists were invited to conspire on the fronts of artificial intelligence, data center infrastructure, digital surveillance, and strategic mineral acquisition, all of which are now weapons in the struggle for imperialist supremacy.
On China, the G7 powers gathered not as defenders of the oppressed nations, but as rival robbers confronting another imperialist power. China should not be understood as an anti-imperialist counterweight to U.S. Imperialism, but a modern social-imperialist power. “Socialist in words and imperialist in deeds”: exporting capital, deepening debt dependency, extracting resources, expanding military reach, and asserting its own great-power chauvinism across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific. The conflict between the G7 and China is nothing less than the rivalry among imperialist powers over markets, technology, raw materials, ports, trade routes, spheres of influence, and the repartition of the world.
Despite their internal contradictions, the G7 powers act together against their rivals and the international masses alike. The G7 develops the political and economic line of Euro-American Imperialism. NATO develops the military line. Together they reveal the same process: expanding arms budgets, deepening sanctions, preparing war, attacking the working class, and intensifying the exploitation of the oppressed nations. The protests in Geneva signal that the masses will not be silent in the face of the rising tide of global reaction.
